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Nurses at Everett’s first hospital, which opened on Broadway in January of 1894. Image from the Everett Public Library’s Northwest Room Collection.

In our last A Reading Life post about Women’s History Month, Mindy wrote about the importance of personal stories when describing the history of a place. We make history every day, just in living our lives and being a part of our communities. These individual contributions can be hard to trace unless a person leaves a written record or participates in something like the Everett Public Library’s oral history projects. The farther back we go, the more difficult it can be to track down the stories of women and people in minority groups; these individuals were rarely granted space in written accounts of the time. One thing that improves the chances of learning more about the activities of these underrepresented individuals is if they were a part of a larger group. Whether we learn from the records that groups kept or the occasional newspaper coverage that larger projects may have attracted, the trail is a little bit stronger.

Towards the end of the 19th Century, women in what would become Washington State began to form groups and clubs for a variety of reasons. This was a reflection of a larger Women’s Club Movement within the country, but also the outcome of homegrown political movements and a reaction to some specific needs within communities. In Washington State many women were deeply involved in movements to gain the right to vote. When Washington was still a territory, women organized and won the right to vote in 1883; unfortunately they lost that right when Washington became a state in 1888. It eventually became the fifth state to grant women the vote in 1910 – 10 years before the ratification of the 19th Amendment. More on that amazing story can be found here.

The Everett Woman’s Book Club sits on the steps of the old Monte Cristo Hotel. They were responsible for founding Everett’s first library. Image from the Everett Public Library’s Northwest Room Collection.

In Everett and Snohomish County, socially and politically active women were also engaged in acts of community building. As the men in the area worked at the clearing of land and the building of mills, the women were involved with founding the first schools, hospitals, and libraries. Women made sure that the children of the community had access to healthy food, clothing, and shelter. They provided for the social activities of the growing communities in the county and invited newcomers in to participate in book clubs, garden clubs, and other special interest groups. The Northwest Room collection has records from a small assortment of Everett-based women’s clubs that can be made available by request in which you could read about their efforts.

Just one of the many boxes of records in the University of Washington Special Collections pertaining to the activities of club women in Washington State.

Though immensely important to their home communities, these clubs were not without flaws. Nationally the Women’s Club Movement was, more often than not, segregated by color lines and ethnic backgrounds; Washington State was no different in this regard. There was a Washington State Federation of Women’s Clubs, and a Washington State Federation of Colored Women’s Organizations. As noted in my last post, one of the earliest presidents of the latter group lived in Everett. We can learn about the work of both groups by visiting the University of Washington’s Special Collections Department to view collections of their records (these are open to the public though it’s best to email ahead so that they can pull materials for you).

If you don’t have time to go be a historian for the day, there are resources in the Northwest Room and online that can provide you with information about the role of women in the Northwest – from indigenous life before contact, though today. Some of my favorites include the following:

The History of Snohomish County, Washington edited by William Whitfield contains sections on the different women’s clubs in towns and cities in Snohomish County and provides a good point-in-time look at what the County was like in the early decades of non-Native settlement.

Bridging Two Centuries: Everett Women from the 1890s to World War I by retired Northwest Room Historian, Margaret Riddle is an excellent audiobook that provides local context for the topics discussed in this post. Unlike the other resources listed above, the library owns circulating copies of this resource so it can be enjoyed at home or in your car.

While the other books mentioned are reference copies that must stay in the library, we encourage you to come to the Northwest Room to work with them. The Northwest Room is staffed on weekdays from 10-5pm but the materials in the room can be accessed any time the library is open. If you are interested in accessing any of the Northwest Room’s archival materials, contact us to make an appointment and we would be happy to pull boxes for you.

The best-books-of-the-year lists have been popping up (including our own), but the year’s not over yet. Here are our fiction picks for December. These are some of the most anticipated new releases of the month, based on advance reviews and book world enthusiasm.

Click here to see all of these titles in the Everett Public Library catalog, where you can read reviews or summaries and place holds. Or click on a book cover below to enlarge it, or to view the covers as a slide show.

These titles – from established, new, and emerging authors – are some of the most anticipated new releases of the month, based on advance reviews and book world enthusiasm.

Click hereto see all of these titles in the Everett Public Library catalog, where you can read reviews or summaries and place holds. Or click on a book cover below to enlarge it, or to view the covers as a slide show.

We here at A Reading Life have lost one of our own. Our friend and colleague David White passed away unexpectedly September 20th. I’m having a difficult time coping with the fact that he is really, truly gone. In trying to process my grief I’m going back through and reading all his blog posts and picturing his voice reading the words.

Our memorial to David outside the Main Library Circulation Office, where he worked, along with some of his favorite books and music.

As you may have been able to tell from David’s posts here, he really loved the cult classics. He was big into what I call cheesy B movies, but also just into films in general. Over the years he picked up a lot of information and trivia about these and other topics, and was always ready, willing, and able to share them with the likeminded people he met.

I met David 10 years ago when I moved to Washington State from Illinois. Not surprisingly, one of the first things I did was get a library card. Guess who issued my library card? David. David was also the person who updated my account when I got married and changed my last name. His eyes would light up when I’d check out the few MST3Kor Red Dwarf DVDs the library had back then. He recognized a fellow fan in me. In later years David came to understand how scatterbrained I can be. He started going out of his way to remind me when a new MST3K boxed set was going to be released so I would be sure not to miss it. David was one of the few library employees I interacted with until I started working here.

Calm and friendly, David wasn’t the type to throw on a fake smile and greet you in such a way that might make you uncomfortable. He always asked, “How can I help you?” like he really meant it. And he did. David would listen with a sympathetic ear if you had a tale of misfortune to relate. It didn’t matter if you were a library patron he’d just met or someone he’d worked with for 25 years. David had empathy in spades.

He was also so damn funny! David had a wicked sense of humor, and just hearing the distant sound of his laughter somewhere in the massive downtown library always put a smile on my face and made me know it was going to be a good day. In recent years we bonded over our shared love of RiffTrax, and would often bump into each other at the movie theater when there was a rare theatrical screening. We would recount our favorite scenes or lines and share a hearty laugh. There’s a show coming up next month and I will feel lost there without him.

The sadness is heavy like a rock inside of all of us, knowing we won’t see David again. There are few people in this world I have met who were truly kind souls and never rose to anger. David was one of those rare few who made each person he met just a little bit better than they were before.

David’s family has been amazing during this tragic time. They have kept both the library and library patrons informed of arrangements and have read every single story about David that has been posted to our Facebook page. We invite all of Everett and beyond to join us at a memorial for David:

Bring your stories to share with us and David’s family, and also bring cookies. David really loved a good cookie, and his family would like to pay tribute to that by having cookies at his memorial. Gifts may be made to the library in memory of David, per family request.

David loved Doctor Who, and had a variety of Doctor Who T-shirts he wore to work. Fans would strike up conversations with him about the show upon meeting him.

I’m still struggling through writing this, so I’ll leave you with some heartfelt words from our mutual friend and colleague Kathy:

David and I were members of the same secret handshake society: The Whovians. That’s the cult of Doctor Who, for those of you who don’t belong. We initially recognized one another by our T-shirts, which are indecipherable to outsiders and yet don’t stand out in the general population. We had different favorite actors and episodes, but it’s a friendly cult so it was all cool.